By Tom Ferrick

I didn’t make it to federal court yesterday for Vince Fumo’s second day on the witness stand and perhaps it is just as well.  I would have been tempted to laugh out loud and gotten in trouble with the judge.

Bailiff, escort that laughing man from the courtroom at once!

On Monday, we had Fumo telling the world that he is a shy, introverted and awkward guy.

On Tuesday, we had him telling the courtroom that he was, de facto, the executive director of Citizens Alliance for Better Neighborhoods. And since he didn’t take a salary in that role, he felt it was okay to take goods and services in lieu of pay.  You know, power tools to the tune of (Vince says) $63,000 which he may or may not have returned to the non-profit.

Machiavelli was Right

“I viewed it as my nonprofit, my entity, my baby,” Fumo testified. “Gave it birth. Nursed it along.”

It is to laugh.

This is the same Vince who, for years,  resolutely denied any role with Citizens Alliance. And kept it’s activities - and its source of income - secret.  All queries about the operation of the non-profit directed at Fumo were immediately rebuffed.  Callers were told to go elsewhere.  The senator did not have direct dealings with the alliance. (I know because I was one of the reporters who were rebuffed.)

Fumo, who will be back on the stand today, (please, someone ask him about the tiki torches he bought with Citizen Alliance money) seems to be trying out what I would call “the seamless web” defense.

He was a public servant who lived and breathed work every minute of the day.  So everything became part of that work.  If an employee paid with state or Alliance money or ran personal errands for him that was okay.  If he enjoyed some perks, courtesy of the state and his non-profit that was okay, too.  He saw the public and private as a seamless web.

There is precedence for this.  After all, we provide the President with a home, a personal staff, a chef, a chauffeur - all on public money.  I am not sure if the perks include a set of power tools, though.

As governor, Ed Rendell gets use of a mansion on the Susquehanna, where a personal staff makes meals.  He has a state-owned car driven (like bats of out hell) by state troopers.

But, mostly this public-private merger isn’t practiced in the U.S. of A. It was in Europe, though, where ruling families got palaces and perks provided by the state.  In 15^th Century Florence, for instance, the Medicis viewed government workers as their servants. One of them was Niccolo Machiavelli, a bureaucrat who gave his prince some useful advice about keeping  their public and private spending separate.

People will forgive a ruler for many things, Machiavelli wrote in The Prince, but not if he takes what is theirs.

And what Vince took wasn’t his to take.